Friday, May 14, 2010

wan-derfully excited

you know, i haven't done a whole lot of cooking lately. at least, nothing to really report on - if we've stayed in, i've just busted out some sort of repeat dish. booooring.but a few days ago, i picked up a couple of smallish lobster tails on sale at the grocery store. literally, two 3-oz. tails - very small, and not really enough to make two complete dinners out of. so when i polled my twirlies (that's my twitter girlies, don'tcha know) and the girls on the cooking board on the nest, i got a nice handful of suggestions. the one that stood out the most was one for giada's brown butter risotto with lobster, from my awesome buddy blake_monster.so i went home, gathered up all my ingredients, stuck the lobster tails in my steamer basket to cook, and melted and browned up some butter:

the lobster cooked up quickly:

it was my first time ever making any sort of risotto, so i was a little apprehensive. but the recipe was rated "easy," and it was. i added my chicken broth a little at a time as it instructed, and watched my arborio rice puff up and soften to a lovely chewy consistency. and, as it turned, out, when i freed the meat from their shells, it was just slightly undercooked. so i chopped it up and added it to the mixture towards the end of the cooking process, to cook it very lightly and not turn my precious lobster meat into rubber.

as for the teen, i threw together a fun dish using some stuff i'd forgotten about in the pantry. i boiled up some chow mein noodles, tossed in some frozen veggies, and thickened up a bottle of teriyaki sauce with a little cornstarch and some brown sugar. i mixed it all together, and voila! a lovely meal that she really enjoyed.

earlier that afternoon, i'd printed up a recipe that my buddy ssinca had linked me to - a rice krispy concoction that incorporated half a cup of nutella and some crushed-up chocolate hazelnut wafer cookies. the teen cut it up and had a hunk of it for dessert, and the bite i had was SCRUMPTIOUS. oh, so good.

and, a couple of non-food related items - my beloved stella & dot just came out with the most adorable line of little girls' jewelry. while it's supposed to be for mini divas 3 and up, i figured that the bean could handle it - at least, long enough for me to snap a couple of shots. i want to get some better pictures of her modeling the pieces to use in my own advertising, but that'll come later. for now, this is the best i got:

lastly, there's something new that's been occupying a good amount of my time and attention. a couple of weeks ago, during my last visit with my esthetician for a brow shaping, she mentioned that she'd just participated in a fun party with a friend of hers. said friend has a lovely, large home and is always being asked to throw sales parties - jewelry, make-up, cooking products, you name it. well, she finally got tired of being asked and decided to just pick a day to have everyone come and set up a table in her expansive living room. everyone invited a few friends, and had a blast.i realized that this could be a great way to get more exposure for stella & dot, as well as to offer the opportunity to other ladies who do direct sales from home. and then i thought it'd be fun to expand it even further and maybe make a live action mini-etsy out of it. i put the word out to a bunch of my buddies, asked them to spread the word, found a venue, picked a date, and less than a week after the fire was lit under my ass, we had this:

do you love the name? 'cuz i do. haha! i'm pretty excited about it, because not only are we doing this in less than a month, but it looks like the idea has gone over so well with a lot of vendors that we're already on track for a repeat. i'm dying of curiosity as to how the first WWE (hahaha, i still crack up at the acronym) will go, but wouldn't it be cool if it turned into a monthly thing, in different venues and cities, with all sorts of fun vendors? if you're local and find yourself with some free time on june 5th between noon and 4pm...come out and see us! and if you've got something to sell and would like to join us for future WWEs, drop me an email. so fun! i can't wait.